Coffee and Gratification
by Cail M
Summary: A not so mysterious stranger takes a grown-up and very drunk Ron home with him, little knowning what he's gotten himself in for in the morning after. Ron's POV, slashy.


  
  
**Summary:** A not so mysterious stranger takes a grown-up and very drunk Ron home with him, little knowing what he's gotten himself in for in the morning after.   
**Disclaimer:** The characters belong to J.K. Rowling and I mean no disrespect by using them for my own purposes.  
**Warning:** This story contains slash of a rather sexual nature and a few racy comments are made which contain curse words.  
**Note:** From the mind of my Neville: (/He looks like _I'm_ lying, I can't lie so bald-faced as all /that/. But can he really imagine me taking advantage? Imagine, most shockingly of all that I might want to? No! I was just being friendly to an old friend; he needed a bed for the night. …. So I gave him mine. Right, all the symptoms of a sane man./)  
S'funny, because this is what sparked the whole story that follows, it started with Neville just saying that and I couldn't even use it in the story.  
**Thanks:** Thanks to my beta readers, Bec and Ms. Townsend. The lovely line about making spinach tastier for children was something that Bec said that made me laugh so she gets credit for that.   
  
  
** Coffee and Gratification**   
  
  
Morning fresh, that thick perfume of sleep and strangers pillows and…   
  
Someone's coffee smells delicious. I lie in bed trying to think of /any/ better way to wake up than in someone else's warm bed with a miraculous lack of hangover headache and possibly a fellow hazelnut coffee fan /possibly/ making me breakfast in the next room!   
  
Consciousness spirals around me, wafting further and further away until I can't even imagine it… Something sets me on a leaf and floats me across a puddle of dreams, scud, skip, whisper, sleep swishes my boat across the water, reflecting dreams.   
....  
I wake up again. The light has changed. Someone has drawn the curtains; there is no more sun for me. I do have a headache now, from being drenched in sleep, saturated in the sweat of my own dreams.   
  
I roll into sitting, sick with myself, miserable in the fancy that hours have passed and my mysterious companion of the night has gone to work, fleeing the scene of unbridled night passion and leaving me not knowing where the coffee beans or the milk might be. I crawl out of bed and find my clothes. I don't remember taking these clothes off in the first place, which gives me a queer feeling, like a mix of pride and guilt-the guilt it a bit out of the blue, me, guilty at my own irresponsibility? Not often.   
  
But I don't remember twisting these blankets up, what a pity that is. I feel a few tendrils of regret tickling my brain, yeah, it's regret after all, not guilt.   
  
I dress hastily. The mirror tells me I'm looking strange in my rumpled dress-robes so early in the morning. I find the door and slip out of the bedroom.   
  
I can smell the hazelnut lingering in this unfamiliar hallway, mmm, such a good smell in such a grey hall cluttered with such soulless watercolors of ocean scenes. Coffee. The Holy Grail!-well, mug--my highest hope in the morning. I can go find a tankard and coffee and then and by that point I will be cured of headache and dry mouth and hopefully empty stomach, fortified and prepared. And who cares what then? How bran-cereal packet tagline-ish I sound. And that I can string that sentence together just shows you how far I have to go to properly slap myself awake. Let's see. A door. I know how these work, twist knob, walk in. Kitchen. This is definitely where coffee is born. Not alone. I'm not. Mmmm, blurry familiar person. I rub my eyes, maybe I've met her before.   
  
Neville?!   
  
"Neville, you took me home?"   
  
He jerks his head up to look at me and springs out of his chair like a tube snake out of, well, a tube. "Oh, you're up." His greeting would seem flat, but that's far too genial. He greets me like I'm moldy cheese that he regrets having kept around for so long.   
  
…So. Or perhaps I should rephrase that. Soooooooo.   
  
"You mean to tell me that /I/ thrashed your covers around like that?" I have to ask.   
  
He blanches at my insinuation, his first reaction to me. "Yes." He starts to say something else but only manages a squeaking noise, like an accordion being squeezed, but no notes played. He has to clear his throat, "Don't you dare look so disappointed."   
  
Okay, so the disappointed look was pretty bastardly of me, but I'm a jerk when I roll straight out of bed and Neville Longbottom is a target a mile wide.   
  
"You've got no worries. All your sisters and female companions are safe from my charms for /one/ night anyway. You were the /only/ person who offered to take me home?" I comb my hair back from my face and my smirking muscles ache as they stretch. "Besides, /I/ was teasing, you're the only one being serious." I get up to find where the mugs are but he stops me before I get anywhere.   
  
"Do you want to wake the whole house?"   
  
I was only rattling open cupboards and such! But his reasons for taking me home are beginning to dawn on me, very slowly. Ginny was with me last night, and he probably stowed her in some guest bedroom to sigh moonily about all through his night on the couch. Yowch, yes, a pathetic hopeless romantic/masochist, I certainly wouldn't put that past him.   
  
Now I'm impressed, so impressed that I stop stumbling across his tiled kitchen floor towards the likely looking cabinets on my Quest for the Holy Mug. "You've got other people here?" I'm subtle, I'm subtle!   
  
I must admit, disappointment does not fill my dark soul with a painful burning light at the thought of not being stuck here alone with the Neville. It does however give a static flicker through my feet. (I have decided that people with many guests are so worried about having enough bacon and coffee that they rarely offer to give sweet foot massages to any of them, over breakfast. I learn things the hard way and the rest I make up.)   
  
I lean against the counter with one hip, looking around for a while and I see absolutely nothing interesting enough to distract me from sitting down again.   
  
He mutters something about his Gran, I think, and gives me this look, well he doesn't give it to me directly but this look crosses his face that I recognize I know that look but find hard to place immediately. Oh, wait, yes! Coming from a big family, when we were all together or even half together we'd get this look from someone, the maitre'd or the clerk or anyone, and it's a look of pleading and disapproval that someone would give all of us before letting us into a room with thing that were fragile, or could burn easily, or be broken or eaten or sat upon or spilled or dropped or stained. This look begs to be knocked off that face in a violent way. At least, it always begs /me/ to wipe it off with a fist.   
  
On the other hand, it also makes me want to prove people wrong by being insanely responsible, careful and generally got-a-corncob-where-the-sun-doesn't-shine proper. /People/, regardless of who they are, they need to be proved wrong indiscriminately -- don't know what about, exactly.   
  
"D'you have a newspaper?" I fully expect him to collect copies of Witches Weekly and keep them in carefully labeled boxes in his closets. In some special order I'm afraid. What I want is a bitchy gossip-column before the coffee comes around.   
  
"No, no newspaper," Neville scowls. I think he's put out, I think he's sick of my inane prating, I think he wants Ginny to stretch her arms and come into the kitchen, all pink and sleepily tousled so he can fantasize that /he/ spent the night with her. Oh shit. What if he did? No, no, he really wouldn't have. I gotta give Ginny some credit for good taste, too.   
  
"Read this." He tosses a glossy catalogue on to the table, there is a picture of a lumpy pink thing on the front, a yam I think. Not my idea of breakfast reading, but he seems completely unwilling to talk or even look at me anymore. He is in the process of making breakfast, eggs that accept much beating and eventually give up and frabble deliciously in a pan, seducing my nose. He gets me my coffee, finally, but he doesn't ask if I want sugar or cream, just leaves it up to me to add what I wish to the black swamp. I take my cream and sugar with a little coffee, please. At last, the milky sweetness I desire.   
  
"The World's Best Gran" it says in a scribble, around the mug. Substitute 'Mom' for 'Gran' and I made my mother the exact same mug when I was five. Of course that's ancient history but this mug looks new and the scrawl isn't honest wobbly-scribbly, it's kitschy, I'm supposed to go 'aaaw', like cute like puppies in a basket and kids with awfully big blue eyes. It fails to be at all appealing, but the coffee inside is good. I make it sweet, just like I like it, and use up a great deal of concentration making it creamy.   
  
I swallow the first mouthful and melt into a mellow man. I let Neville have his silence, no need to interrupt. I drink all my coffee and slowly flip through the yam catalogue until I get to the last page.   
  
"Zucchini," I broach pleasantly, and casually I think, "It's enough to give a man a deep feeling of inferiority."   
  
Neville half turns, leaving his feet where they are and twisting at the waist, I've seen dancers do this before, with far more grace and I worry less that they will fall over. "What?"   
  
Something in me /knows/ that I should drop it, he just doesn't get it and it's not funny enough to explain, ah, but I'm going to anyway, to spite my better judgment. He lured me here under false pretenses; and I believed his insincere wish to give me a bed for the night, while he was plotting to get my sister into a bed as well.   
  
"A /zucchini/," I even hold up the magazine, pointing at the picture and gesturing a little but I'm growing feeble, on the edge of my own amusement. "See, Neville-" I don't have to go on and that's lucky because I'm grinning like a skull and as it is.   
  
The comprehension on his face is priceless. It stays there, teetering, like Neville himself, for a long few seconds before I even think of counting them. His face crumples up darkly, in disgust.   
  
"Okay," I shrug, "Why did you take me home last night?" If not for my charming immature sense of humor than whaaaaat you silly boy? Heh, tell me about your crush on Ginny so I have it from the horse's mouth and can warn you against her, before she falls for it, gets depressing and starts writing poetry about love.   
  
"Because," he has his own mature reasons then, that stiffness in his shoulders seems to say.   
  
"You remind me of my brother." I nod. " Percy," I add, in case he doesn't get that immediately. "Only," I have to give him this, "you make a much better cup of coffee."   
  
He's taking so long with brekkers and he's ignoring me, I feel unloved and I'm beginning to wonder if he's really done and just burning everything to torture me. Okay, this is actual coffee it's not just pretending to be coffee but he's still over there beating up the eggs, anything to satisfy his sadistic tendencies, ha ha. I have to get out of this kitchen, get some real air, city air, clogged with nice burnt petrol gases, and nose hair singeing lorry exhaust. The slosh at the counter is humming to himself. Listen. He's completely forgotten about me, and that's a straw too far. Or heavy. Whatever.   
  
I stand up, shaking out the limbs a bit to remind them that they are in fact awake and following the command of I, fearless leader.   
  
"Ginny, where's my stuff, did I bring anything with me?" I shout it, in case she's within earshot. She doesn't appear to be so I yell at the host this time because I know he's within earshot but a little shouting never hurt anything. "Okay, lemme go roust Ginny, we've gotta get home, I can grab a piece of toast and egg on the way out, 'kay, chuck?" I flash him what I hope is a hideous smile and I cross the room, peering into the hallway and trying to figure out where the guestroom is hiding.   
  
"Ginny?" I can barely hear Neville over my noise.   
  
"Yes, I'm taking Ginny and her little dog, too, if she brought one." I pat my pockets, making sure I've got my wand, my sunglasses-oh, I didn't know I had spare change, wonder what I can buy with this--   
  
"Ginny?" He repeats, seeming to not understand that yes, I will take her with me when I go. This kid has problems, he hadn't thought about this before he made me feel like I had better things to do. Well, he made me feel like I ought to have better things to do, anyway. This thought had not even occurred to him, he's sincerely stunned standing there with his arms akimbo, his eyes wide as a flattened fish.   
  
"My sister," I nod, meaningfully, hoping to convey that yes I will indeed punch his fucking lights out if he doesn't fork over the girl.   
  
"Ginny isn't /here/." He looks a little upset with me and I'm beginning to feel a little upset with him.   
  
"Hey, uh, okay, you said you have guests, so just bring them out and I'll point out to you which one is Ginny, 'kay?" I give him a sweet smirk and relax a little, hell, he's just an obsessive freak, nothing to get bent out of shape about, besides, I'm still hungry enough for whatever he's making for breakfast. "No, c'mon, I know a bit of schoolgirl crush when I see one, and Neville you've got one." I give him a wink to let him know I see through all his tricks. "She took you out once, didn't she? Or was that someone else?-" I realize I can superimpose almost anyone over Neville in that mental picture I have of Ginny at some fancy dance or other, I can see Colin or one of the other kids in her year, or even Seamus?   
  
"It /was/ me," He looks at me in mystification. "That was ten-yes, /ten/ years ago." He really seems to think I've shot out of the rocking chair and into the air with the cuckoo birds, well allright then, he thinks I'm crazy and I think he's a jerk for stringing me along all morning and pretending to be such an innocent.   
  
"Yeah, c'mon, what were you planning, a romantic conquest? Look boy, when you're looking for a mess in the bed you don't bring the older brother home, no matter how noble you are." I roll my eyes at him and hope he gets the message.   
  
"The-the-" he's have problems getting started, the little things are not connecting with the other little things. To use a distinctly Muggle expression, the clutch is slipping.   
  
"Look, a girl is going to think, 'my brother's here? Oh good god,' and go hide in a bathroom and not come out-even if you've already gotten the dirty business over and done with, she's not going to come out in your oversized robe and ask for a mug of coffee. Please." I get a little thick with the condescension but I don't exactly have a light touch when I really go off. I also happen to roll my eyes again, the room's sort of spinning, I should stop swerving, my brain's gonna crash.. "And besides that, you're too old for Ginny."   
  
"I'm only a year older then Ginny-" Outraged confusion is easily interrupted by my sleek interrogation tactics. Or I interrupt him anyway.   
  
"Only a year? Only a year? A year and a decade, my boy. You're got your house decorated all nice, you've got doilies on the coffeetable," that might not be true, I haven't seen his coffee table, but the look on his face shows I hit him right on target, "You're /settled/." As far as insults go, I could to better, I know. "A girl like her needs a chap who's-well, who is like running around money, cheap in that nice rich sort of way, she needs a fellow to take her up the ladder to success in journalism! Not you, tending your lilacs and making spinach more tasty for children!" I pick up the mug from the table and show it off as Item 1, the physical evidence, "You invite your Granny up to visit. You're not the kind of interesting exotic mind-expanding sort, you're not what she needs!"   
  
"Why does she need that?" He looks hurt, and I feel almost sorry for what I've said, but not really, and not even for a moment.   
  
"Because-" And I don't know exactly how to go on so I'm there stunned and standing, just waiting for the reason to come back to me. Oh, yes! "Because /she/ is going to be famous, and you… are not."   
  
"Famous?" He sounds incredulous. "Famous?!" Nope, he just sounds mad. "You think Ginny should be famous?"   
  
It's disgusting how since she started working, the whole family thinks she needs special treatment-protection from the world's worldliness.   
  
I suddenly have no idea why Ginny must be famous and successful and popular in a field where I have failed completely. I'm not one for living vicariously through others, or even leeching other people's limelight, in spite of the long friendship with quite the celebrity. I have no idea why Neville is completely wrong for her, or why I have even put myself up to the task of finding Ginny a suitably wild, hard-riding, rich, adventure-some match.   
  
So, stupidly, I keep talking, like if I try then I'll know and if I explain it to him then it'll be easy to figure out.   
  
"I've been drinking Muggle liquor lately, it's cheaper, and leaves me with a long, bad-tasting hangover that I keep thinking will remind me not to buy any more." I try a laugh but it doesn't work out, the material is wrong, my audience of one just looks at me and listens.   
  
I feel stupid to continue but it's worse standing there in silence getting stared at. "The No Hangover charm must be expensive to put on a drink, because it costs so much more then the Muffle stuff, or maybe I just have conversion wrong, but it seems cheap when I buy it in the clinking green bottles from the florescent Muggle market on the corner of the main street." Babble, oh, what a wall of it I build myself. Or is it a tower?   
  
"But last night was better?" I dunno, it probably was. "I had a beer with my friend the, ah, bartender and then I heard that there was a party. And guess who was at the party? No, no, well, well, The Harry Potter and Cho and Brownie, and um, what's his face, the little Colin Creevy, I forget who else, lots of people, so we drank. Harry's a real whiz at mixing drinks now. I shouldn't have taken Ginny, I'm such a bad influence on her when she visits me, but everyone else tries to set a good example, somebody's gotta be badly impressionable. It was like we had a reunion last night, yeah, but Gin and Col weren't even the same year as us, so it wasn't exactly."   
  
"Oh, and I saw you there, but you were trapped in the corner with the gorgeous Brownie and her scoop-neck dress, I'm sure you were terrified there, yes!" I can't stop talking, if my teeth touch I'll cease to exist. Doesn't that make sense?   
  
"Why did you bring me home, huh? If not for Ginny then for what? You must have been quite a bit more watered down then I if you thought I was a lovely girl you were dragging home."   
  
"Mmm, I warn you, it is good to avoid the Brownie in bed, she /bites/ like a little snake. Who was the other girl? I didn't know her that well, the one who stood by you at the end of the bar looking like somebody's pet poet, like she wasn't sure how to have fun? You two might have gotten on merrily, y'should've brought /her/ home, leave the Brownie to me and you could have had Vanilla all to yourself, your bed all to yourself."   
  
"I go to a party back here and I look around and I start wondering, who have I /not/ fucked?" I'm just fucking with him, because he looks too angel-pure for me to believe for one minute, I have to stir him up to prove that he has dirt in all the places the rest of us do.   
  
He raises his hand and gives me a sissy-whisker, the wimpiest bitchslap in the world.   
  
The smack makes a very meaty sound, the resounding sound of the flesh of palm against the flesh of my cheek, reminds me that I'm just meat, he's just meat, but he's /ineffectual/ meat and I can take it. The sissy-whisker probably sprained about two freckles, no it wasn't much of a slap, it was all sound, all stage fakery.   
  
I can see that his hand is unsteady when he pulls away from my face and his breath is catching like he'd been crying or running up and down stairs, and I know he hasn't, he's been making eggs!   
  
"Not /me/!" His words catch up way past his actions, but he's talking louder, gabbling now, he sounds a lot like me, but worse, because he hasn't got my composure.   
  
Uh, and I'd never suggested such a thing, no, no fucking of the Neville. I've never even fucked /with/ him, just messed with his head, I wasn't even teasing him at the party! At least, not that I remember. I think he has plans to apologize , he has that sort of shocked look on his widdle cheeks, but I cut off his good intentions with my wicked tongue.   
  
I clutch my face and gasp in mock agony, "Biiiiiy-aaaatch." I say it with too many syllables to be in /real/ pain, so instead of feeling really sorry for me and stewing in his own guilt, he ducks his head in close to mine and is real contrite.   
  
"Show me." He whispers, staring at my eyes so close that even I'm a wee bit uncomfortable.   
  
I give him a little push with one hand, but only manage to knock him back few inches, then I show him. He reminds me of my mother in a hen-fuss over something Bill and Charlie have gotten into a fight over, and this is a relaxing realization so I stupidly forget that the guy just smacked me.   
  
Neville stares at the red place on my cheek where his fingerprints are, the prints must be hard to spot among all my freckles, because he looks at it for such a long time without saying anything. Yeah, and he has to find it under all my week-old sunburn from the heated pool with that girl who I completely failed to hit it off with--   
  
Ambrosia! Fuck! No, wait, that's the wrong word entirely. Oh, I remember what it's called.   
  
A kiss. A Kiss.   
  
Right there smack dab between my eyes and under my nose. On the lips, and not like a pecked apology but this-this-this definately something different kind of kiss.   
  
I can feel his tongue, his lips soft and thick, his mouth against mine tastes faintly of coffee, tastes of morning breath. It doesn't taste all good, in fact it's a bad taste but I've never kissed someone in the morning like this, standing while she makes breakfast, there's an intimacy here that I don't think anyone has offered me before- Woooooooah now, roly-poly fucking lawn gnomes. Roly-Poly Fucking Lawn Gnomes.   
  
This is not a she, this is not some beautiful chick who dragged me back to her bedroom and spent the night sprawling with me, /this/ is not a she at all, this is /the/ Neville Longbottom, this is the dweebiest kid I've ever known, the clumsiest, squibbiest most wilting pansy boy to ever… kiss me? No past tense about it! He's kissing me still, has been for a long time there not a single way I can react to this.   
  
This is worse then getting smacked.   
  
I finally realize that I'm just standing here like a statue when my eyes feel dry, and I have to blink at him and stagger back a few steps.   
  
He is off balance when I move away, he touches nothing, wobbles and collides with the table, jostling everything so that coffee spills on his plant catalogue. All he can do is stare at the overflowing coffee and grin. All I can do is stare at him staring at the overflowing coffee, it's very dull.   
  
I've never thought of myself as a very good kisser, to be perfectly honest, but sometimes someone can just shock me with a sweetness, a lightness, an intensity in mouth-to-mouth arousal, okay, sometimes is just once, one girl, once, her mouth was so light and she wanted me so badly that it was the best kiss of my life. And it just got topped.   
  
I didn't know I was that good to be kissed.   
  
"Ron. Ron." Neville hiccups off the tip of his tongue, a neat diving-board flip, but he seems surprised that he said it out loud.   
  
I have to think about this for a long time, a record amount of time, probably, my name in his mouth, plus his mouth on my mouth equals--I have nothing and I will have nothing to do with Neville's queerness, I will not be his sad obsession. Plus this plus that equals: "No." I insist.   
  
"Ron, Ron, Ron." He didn't stop, I still hear him and it's suddenly in my head to shake him until he stops but I just choke and cough and gulp where I stand.   
  
"Who else is gay?" It's a ridiculous thing to ask, I don't know why I do, well, I'm curious that's why I ask, but it just falls out of my mouth with much idiocy. Isn't it a relief to have something to say though?   
  
That surprises Neville so much, to just hear me say something that silly that his mouth opens and shuts like a tropical fish, ha, ha, a queer fish, the queen of the queer fish, his scales all translucent fluttery like water feathers. I continue on my way to a watery grave of question. "Turn on the..." he makes a beeping noise and pretends to scan the area, almost jumping out of his skin with amusement. "Coo, like, just, I dunno, people we went to school with?" Yeah, don't tell me I'm not thinking of another fish in particular who might be leaning that--   
  
"Harry Potter," he tells me, eyes forward. Straight faced.   
  
/Leaning/, he's leaning, he's just leaning! That way.   
  
I hear a spittering noise like flames catching and crackling hot oil-oh, that's me don't I sound nice?   
  
"Nevermind." Neville laughs at me, and covers his mouth with a hand, he bites his palm before he whispers, "Percy. Oliver Wood."   
  
"My brother's /married/." I have to stop this madness I have started. "And Oliver plays for England!" I can hear a strained squeak of incredulity in my voice.   
  
"Than Percy got over it I suppose." He stares over my shoulder so sharply that if looks could kill he'd be piercing my ears. "Or he's bi."   
  
"Aaagh!" He likes this, look at him, the little eel, wriggling and giggling while I suffer with that horrible thought.   
  
"Percy got over me." He admits. I wait for the punch line but what he says makes /sense/, an awful lot of awful sense. "And Quidditch never /cured/ anyone of anything!" He crows, "Except a fear of heights?" He isn't even sure about that so he brushes it off. "It cured my fear-I play for the local team, it's just a little friendly game every now and then when we can rent the balls, the men from The Aerie play again the librarians, a four to three game, I'm a Seeker-Keeper, isn't that an odd position?"   
  
I reach around and rub the back of my neck, and tighten my top button, and I can't think of anything to say that would mean anything after what he just did, so I actually shut up. I look away from him, and grope for my wand; I actually intend to clean up the mess on the table for lack of something more helpful.   
  
By the time his magazine is drying sticky, spread out in the middle of a clean table I can look at him away without bursting into flame or shouting.   
  
His eyes have been shut, and he opens them suddenly like he knows I'm looking. There is suddenly the blue of iris, this intense awake blue like I have never seen in his face, and I realize his eyes are such a /pretty/ blue, like the eyes on a tropical moth dust feathers which are soft and sweet when he kisses me again. Moth mouth, a wet kiss, like kissing a cat. Fuzz.   
  
  
  



End file.
